Peter immediately extinguished his flames, and the temperature plummeted from furnace-like intensity back to merely uncomfortable.
"Keep going, kid!" Tony urged through gritted teeth, his voice strained but determined.
Nobody wanted to die. That was obvious, primal, undeniable.
But they hadn't forgotten their responsibilities as Plumbers—as defenders of their universe and protectors of innocent life.
Protect the universe you inhabit!
Even Tony Stark—frequently accused of selfishness, narcissism, and prioritizing personal interests—had long since prepared himself for ultimate sacrifice in this secret war.
If circumstances truly became hopeless, he wouldn't hesitate to instruct Otto to launch the antimatter annihilation bombs, sending himself and this entire contaminated Earth into oblivion to prevent the zombie plague's spread.
"No. I can't do it," Peter said, shaking his head vigorously with absolute conviction.
He was someone who couldn't even bring himself to kill enemies who actively tried to murder him. Asking him to kill his own friends—even to save the universe—was simply too cruel. An impossible moral equation.
"There has to be another way!" Peter insisted desperately.
The zombie's voice carried disturbing indifference: "Why struggle against inevitability? Wouldn't it be simpler to remain here quietly and observe as both universes perish alongside me?"
That seemingly emotionless tone particularly infuriated Peter, striking something deep and fundamental in his heroic nature.
"Watch everything perish?" Peter's voice rose with genuine anger and incomprehension.
"Don't you have anyone you care about?! Don't you have family, friends, people worth protecting?!" He jabbed an accusatory finger toward the silvery gorilla head, his entire body trembling with emotion.
"Ben always told me that the Omnitrix exists to protect the continuation of intelligent life! That it represents the spark of civilization itself! But what are YOU doing?!"
"You've betrayed the original purpose for creating that watch! You don't deserve to possess one!"
A flicker of confusion passed through the zombie's chaotic, decomposing eyes. He looked down at the gray watch core embedded in his deteriorating chest.
"Family and friends?" His voice carried uncertain notes, as though the concepts were alien. "It seems... there used to be people like that."
He struggled to recall, but the memories in his degraded brain had already become extremely blurry—fragmented impressions rather than complete recollections.
He could only vaguely remember a cousin with orange-red hair who constantly wore a sour expression and called him "doofus." And an elderly man in Hawaiian-print shirts who would enthusiastically present plates of deliberately disgusting insect-based cuisine while advising the two boys to get along better.
That summer vacation had been genuinely wonderful, hadn't it?
Looking back with what remained of his consciousness, perhaps that dinner filled with protein-rich arthropods hadn't been so terrible after all?
He should have savored those moments more carefully. Unlike now—when his tongue couldn't taste anything except the metallic tang of blood and decay.
"I've changed my mind," Benzarro announced, emerging from his brief reverie.
His Adamantium body began rapidly contracting, the geometric blocks compressing inward.
Peter felt sudden hope surge through him: "You're planning to release us?!"
"Wrong!" The zombie's voice turned vicious and predatory.
"I intend to kill you ALL!"
The shrinking structure didn't open outward to provide escape routes. Instead, it compressed inward, reducing Peter and his companions' survivable space. Simultaneously, dark weapon ports emerged throughout the interior surface, converging from all directions to create overlapping fields of fire.
Dense arrays of infrared targeting lasers illuminated their bodies, leaving essentially no gaps in the coverage pattern.
"Look what you've done!" Pietro shouted, defaulting to his standard stress response.
When uncertain who to blame, yell at Tony Stark.
"What does this have to do with me?!" Tony protested indignantly.
"YOU manufactured all these weapons systems!"
"That's me from another universe! Completely different person!"
That's still you!
Tony laughed bitterly with exasperation: "Why don't you apply that same logic and say that Ben from a parallel universe is still fundamentally Ben Parker! He's the one actively trying to murder us!"
"Those situations aren't remotely comparable—"
"STOP ARGUING!" Wanda interrupted by physically striking both of them.
She punched her brother relatively gently. But when hitting Stark, she drove her elbow into his kidney with considerably more enthusiasm.
"ARGH!" Tony felt like his organ was about to rupture, and he secretly instructed Friday to prepare emergency medical countermeasures.
"E.U.N.I.C.E.!" Wanda called out urgently.
She extended her hand toward the synthezoid, who immediately understood the tactical intention. E.U.N.I.C.E. adjusted the Mind Stone's energy frequency within her body to harmonize perfectly with Wanda's chaos magic signature.
Instantly, the Mana flowing through Wanda's system received tremendous amplification!
Brilliant pink radiance erupted from her eyes like twin searchlights!
"Sphere of Napriperta!" Wanda invoked, her voice resonating with cosmic authority.
"Infinite Slaughter Bombardment!" Benzarro commanded simultaneously.
The moment Wanda's crimson protective sphere manifested, devastating bombardment from the zombie's weapon arrays commenced!
The energy output was almost limitless—drawing from the Omnitrix's power reserves with no apparent conservation concerns!
Under continuous maximum-intensity fire, even the zombie's Adamantium body began failing structurally. The metal plating was fracturing audibly, producing terrible tearing sounds as molecular bonds surrendered to physics.
Benzarro possessed no functional pain receptors anymore. He remained completely unconcerned about catastrophic bodily injuries.
He maintained absolute silence, relentlessly unleashing destructive energy until its radiance completely engulfed Wanda and the others, until all external sound vanished beneath the roar of explosions, until his body reached its absolute structural limits—resembling tempered glass after absorbing too many impacts.
CRACK!
BOOM!
The energy compressed within that minuscule space finally detonated catastrophically!
Benzarro's body shattered into countless fragments like iron sparks struck from an anvil, the rebounding shockwave tearing him apart at the molecular level.
But he didn't die. Obviously.
His half-destroyed head rolled several times across debris-strewn ground before becoming whole again—flesh and metal flowing like liquid to restore his form.
Fine dust particles behaved like living cells, gathering around his consciousness and transforming him back into the quadrupedal Bloxx gorilla configuration.
Surveying the city destroyed by the explosion's shockwave, he seemed oddly calm: "They should be dead by now... Hmm?"
His expression shifted to genuine astonishment. "They actually survived that?"
He stared in disbelief at the gradually dissipating crimson sphere.
Inside the protective barrier, Wanda appeared somewhat exhausted, and E.U.N.I.C.E.'s synthetic body showed signs of thermal overload from sustained energy channeling.
But regardless of their depleted condition, they had successfully endured the assault.
"Let's move NOW!" Tony was first to break from the sphere's protection.
He brought both feet together, and nanotechnology allowed his armor to coalesce and reconfigure—transforming into a single massive thruster that propelled him toward Benzarro like a guided meteor.
Peter followed immediately behind, mimicking the tactic.
He used Heatblast's plasma propulsion to achieve similar acceleration.
"Supernova Detonation!" Peter announced.
This time, he didn't need to worry about collateral damage to teammates!
Both heroes unleashed their most devastating barrage simultaneously. The dense missile swarm and extreme thermal radiation instantly compromised the Lego gorilla's structural integrity, literally blasting Benzarro into scattered components!
"Transform: Heatzarro!" the enemy countered immediately.
The silver, brutal Adamantium armor remained intact, but now contained a burning volcanic skeleton instead of geometric blocks—resembling some infernal Ghost Rider emerging from hell's deepest pit.
Purplish-black flames devoured Peter's ordinary fire, transforming into demonic claws that lunged with predatory intent!
SLASH!
The spectral claws pierced directly through Peter's torso—but the "body" vanished the next instant like dispersing smoke.
"Afterimage?" Benzarro registered confusion.
Hundreds of meters away, Pietro—moving faster than conscious perception—gently placed the rescued Peter on stable ground.
Before Benzarro could even process frustration, a coordinated magical assault slammed into his face with tremendous force.
Wanda and E.U.N.I.C.E. cast spells in perfect synchronization, the dense projectile barrage making the zombie struggle to maintain coherent form.
E.U.N.I.C.E. felt genuine frustration with her current limitations: "It's unfortunate that the Mind Stone's capabilities have become so restricted after leaving our home universe. Otherwise, it wouldn't be impossible to amplify your chaos magic sufficiently to completely destroy this opponent."
"It's alright—we'll handle this together!" Wanda insisted, refusing to burden her synthetic companion with excessive pressure.
Her vibrant hair spread outward like a peacock's display, and the chaos magic fused with Mana/Mana radiated across her combat domain like living flame.
For reasons she couldn't immediately identify, even without E.U.N.I.C.E.'s direct assistance, Wanda felt her mystical abilities dramatically improving—as though drawing power from an unexpected source.
It seemed as though a second dimensional realm was providing continuous energy supplementation.
She slowly closed her eyes, allowing her consciousness to resonate with that mysterious alternate dimension.
Distant Connection
In some faraway location—a reality separated by dimensional barriers—an orange-haired woman draped in flowing blue robes suddenly opened her eyes.
Several mystical talismans floated in orbit around her consciousness, their surfaces inscribed with arcane symbols.
"Doctor," she announced to an unseen companion, her voice carrying profound certainty. "Our opportunity has finally arrived!"